Childish Games
by DontForgetWhereYouGotMe
Summary: It is often said that a child's behavior foreshadows the person she will grow up to be... and the children of the House of Black bear no exception...


There were once three little girls, sisters, all small and beautiful like porcelain dolls, all around the age of three or four, all members of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

Although close in age, there was a clear order of hierarchy among the sisters; Bellatrix, the eldest, with her dark, coarse and curly hair and eyelashes, was clearly the leader. As the children played, she directed the games, instructing which girls would hide and which would seek, or demanding the good one when they rode their toy brooms.

When the sisters were alone together, this system worked, for the most part; curly-haired middle child Andromeda, who looked much like her older sister, neither adhered to nor rebelled against Bellatrix's rule, but rather sat on the sidelines while Bellatrix steered the youngest girl, Narcissa, in thought and action. Narcissa didn't look like her sisters; while they were strong with coarse, dark hair, she was fragile, almost frail, with white-blond strands. She was the sister both older girls looked out for, the sister that needed protecting.

The girls fought occasionally; Andromeda would sometimes assert that Bellatrix was too hard on young Narcissa, too controlling. At this, Bella would cross her arms and narrow her dark brown eyes, and Andromeda's voice would falter. "Don't question me, Andee." The girl would speak, her voice cutting through the silence. Andromeda did not blindly obey her sister the way the younger Narcissa did. But she knew, even as a child, that when Bellatrix's voice became like this, when her eyes went narrow, it was best to keep well out of her sight and mind.

Once Andromeda retreated up to her room, Bellatrix would turn back to Cissy and resume whatever game they had been playing.

Sometimes, the sisters visited their aunt and uncles' house. On these occasions, the sisters would play with their two small boy cousins – who were brothers - while the children's parents all sat in the kitchen and discussed worldly affairs over goblets of red wine.

During these outings, Bellatrix and her cousin Sirius, the eldest of the two brothers, (Regulus was the younger) would go head to head. One cause of this was that Sirius had never taken a liking to Bellatrix's favorite game, Mudbloods, Half-Bloods, Purebloods. In it, one person was designated to be the "Pureblood" – a position that Bella unquestionably reigned over. The rest of the group sat in a circle, and the "Pureblood" would come around and tap each child's head, muttering either the word, "Half-Blood" or "Mudblood" with each tap. If a child was dubbed Half-blood, he/she was safe for that round. But if the child was christened a Mudblood, the child would have to run away to escape the wrath of the Pureblood. The Pureblood would continue to chase the child around the room until she had tackled or otherwise "killed" the Mudblood, or until the Mudblood managed to make it safely back to the circle.

As previously mentioned, Sirius didn't particularly like this game. He complained often when Bellatrix selected it, after which a long argument would follow and Cissy and Regulus would whisper quietly together, shooting worried looks at their warring older siblings, while Andromeda cheered Sirius on (at which point Bella would give her a wide-eyed glare.)

Ultimately, Bellatrix would win out, and Sirius would take his place among the circle in a huff.

In one particularly nasty round of the game, Bellatrix tapped Sirius's head and selected him to be the Mudblood. But Sirius, bored of the game and of Bellatrix's unfaltering bossiness, decided he would have a bit of _real_ fun. Rather than run in fear from his cousin, he stood firmly in his place, moving only to fend Bella off when she attempted to tackle him. Try as she might, she couldn't push him down, and Sirius became more amused with each of her failed attempts, howling in laughter at her face as it contorted in annoyance. He assumed that after she realized he was too sturdy to tackle, she would give up. But instead, she looked up at him and the two children locked eyes. Bellatrix's eyes darkened, her mouth turned down in a fierce pout, the one she wore on the seldom occasions when she didn't get her way.

And then she launched.

She came at Sirius with increasing momentum, an attack that he neither anticipated nor had the time to counter. Green sparks of magic flew uncontrollably from Bellatrix's hands as she charged with all her force at his body. When the two collided, the momentum and the magic sent them both flying towards the south side of the room. Bellatrix, looking up, saw that they were hurtling towards a large glass window and jumped up and off of Sirius in time to avoid the crash.

Sirius, however, was helplessly thrown through the curtains of the window and onto the glass pane beyond, which shattered as he was hurled through it.

He would have fallen to his death if one of the adults in the next room over had not heard the crash and rushed to see what the matter was. After immobilizing Sirius mid-fall and bringing him back up through the window to tend to his glass cuts, the four adults eyed Bellatrix (who was clearly the culprit) sternly and asked her what she had to say for herself.

She simply looked directly up at them with wide eyes whose gleam betrayed a sort of knowledge, a haunting ghost of the innocence that was supposed to reside in a child's eyes. She gave them a toothy smile, and replied, in her childlike, angelic voice, "it was a game, mummy. And I won it. I killed him." Her grin widened.

"I killed Sirius Black."


End file.
